Spicer Condemns Violence Hours After Man Who Called For Hillary To be Shot Visits White House

Johnny Depp recently pulled a Kathy Griffin. On Thursday, he spoke to a crowd of people at the Glastonbury arts festival in England. He made a thinly-veiled suggestion that it was time for another actor to kill a president. Johnny Depp may be a good actor, but he definitely was not thinking when he announced this to a crowd of people who didn’t know whether to jeer or cheer.

His exact words were in part,

I think [Trump] needs help. This is going to be in the press, and it will be horrible. But I like that you’re all a part of it. When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?

Yeah, we all got your nod to John Wilkes Booth, Johnny, but what the hell, man? That comment goes beyond poor judgment right into the land of poor taste and moral vulgarity. Johnny Depp did issue a written apology to People stating that he meant no malice with his comments, that it was just a bad joke.

It did not come out as intended, and I intended no malice. I was only trying to amuse, not to harm anyone.

We aren’t certain how Depp actually intended his “joke,” but beyond being out of line, it was poorly timed. After the shooting in Alexandria, it was unwarranted and unwelcome. There was nothing funny about his remarks.

Today, during his press briefing, Sean Spicer said that comments alluding to violence toward the president is “troubling” after he was asked about the play Julius Caesar, a take on the Shakespeare classic depicting an actor dressed as Trump being murdered.

I don’t know that he’s aware about the play in particular that’s going on there but it is frankly, in my belief, a little troubling, the lack of outrage that we’ve seen in some of these instances where people have said what they’ve said with respect to the President and the actions that should be taken.

Just two hours earlier, Trump signed an accountability law for the Department of Veterans Affairs as Rep. Al Baldasaro (R-NH) sat in the audience. Baldasaro advised the Trump campaign on veterans issues and served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He also called for Hillary Clinton to be shot for treason during the presidential campaign, prompting him to be watched by the Secret Service in July 2016. I guess Trump and the gang conveniently forgot about that incident because that would be bad press.

That hypocrisy comes on the heels of Ted Nugent visiting the White House a couple months ago. You know, the same actor (D-list?) who called for Obama’s assassination. If we are going to condemn these sorts of remarks, we need to condemn them from everyone. Where was the outrage when an elected representative and a bad actor did the same to Obama? Oh right, there was none. Just like they cheered when Trump told his crowd to that the “second amendment people” could do something about Hillary Clinton.